An example of the above-described article storage facility is described in JP 2009-007124A. The article storage facility of JP 2009-007124A is configured such that the article transport device moves in front of the article storage rack, along the lateral width direction of the rack, and articles are transported by the article transport device.
In the case of installing two article transport devices, namely, a first article transport device and a second article transport device, as the article transport devices in such an article storage facility, it is conceivable that a movement path (referred to as “first path portion”) in which the first article transport device moves and a movement path (referred to as “second path portion”) in which the second article transport device moves are provided so as to be arranged side by side in proximity to each other or continuously in the lateral width direction of the rack. By providing the first path portion and the second path portion so as to be arranged side by side in the lateral width direction of the rack in this way, the article storage facility can be easily installed in a smaller floor surface area than when the first path portion and the second path portion are provided so as to be separated in the lateral width direction of the rack or the front-rear direction of the rack.
In the case of an article storage facility including a single article transport device, it is desirable that a transport control device that controls the article transport device selectively performs a full path transport control in which the article transport device moves in the entire movement path, and a partial path transport control in which the article transport device moves in a part of the movement path to transport articles. That is, there is a need for a configuration in which the full path transport control is performed to transport articles by the article transport device during a normal operation, and, when the operator needs to enter the movement path to perform an operation due to a maintenance operation or the like on the article storage rack, the partial path transport control is performed to allow the operator to enter the movement path and to perform the maintenance operation, while moving the article transport device in the remaining portion (referred to as “transport operation path portion”) of the movement path excluding the path portion (referred to as “maintenance path portion”) in which the operator has entered, thereby continuing transporting the articles.